


no long goodbye

by barbariccia



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Dark Knight Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Gen, Gender-Neutral Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:02:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26380852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barbariccia/pseuds/barbariccia
Summary: “Like I said - first step’s the hardest."A vice becomes a Virtue becomes a voice in Granson's ear.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	no long goodbye

All that remains of Ser Branden the Righteous does not see, does not hear, does not know anything but the very thing for which he was named. Through him, Lyhe Ghiah is as clear as ever, the king’s wings elegant in the everlasting Light, and the only witnesses to his final words are a broken man, a foreign warrior, and a carpet of fae flowers.

“... and I will not forsake compassion and love. I will not dishonour your memory.”

Dikaiosyne - no, _Branden_ \- looks skyward. Whatever he beholds there must give him some measure of long-awaited peace, for his expression goes soft at long, long last, and the world he gave himself for reclaims him with nothing more than the softest breeze.

Only the Fangs and Eyes of Orthrus remain, innocent despite their role in pulling the sin eater hither and thither, golden upon the grass. All that remains, Granson thinks, of a hero.

The fight has left him tired. Even with that warrior by his side, Dikaiosyne - he refuses to think of that eater beast as Branden, not now, not after everything - had been no easy match. Another man might have thought the win worth celebrating. Not him. Not now. All he feels is sorrow, bone deep, and a weariness he thinks might never leave him.

The warrior themselves had fought harder than he, but they do not seem to suffer the same exhaustion that now makes his head swim. Not even with a greatsword, larger than Granson’s own, upon their back. Not even weighted down by the plate that covers them head to toe. Even so encumbered, they step forward before he has a chance to, to recover the lost treasures of Voeburt.

 _Compassion, and love_. 

Not even in his deepest cups will Granson tell those words to another, he’s certain. Even should he claim the full attention of the tavern - unlikely at best and laughable at worst - he’d not be surprised if no other believed him. But a scant few weeks prior, he’d not have given such a statement more than a second’s worth of his time.

Now, he’s someone else. Merely a man, his purpose fulfilled. A man with too many scars.

But there, in the grass - something catches his eye, something that belongs not at all to Il Mheg, he knows at first glance. A rock - nay, a crystal, but nothing so fancy as the last vestiges of Branden’s memories - small and chipped, a deeper red than anything he’s ever known. Not chipped, he realises, as his fingers close about it, but jagged, naturally so, and with some six-pointed design carved into one face. It belongs to the hero of the hour, he knows, for he has seen them turn it over in their hands at the Stairs, has watched them tuck it safely beneath their armour before setting out.

How could they have dropped it? 

It’s just a rock. Pretty, aye, but just a rock nonetheless, likely kept for sentiment rather than practicality. He can’t begrudge his partner that: if he’d have been able to keep something of Milinda’s as a keepsake, he’d never let it leave his skin. But there’d been nothing left after the attack, nothing but him, and he shouldn’t...

“... _Shouldn’t’ve made it this far?_ You’re not wrong… but you know that by now, don’t you?”

Silence reigns supreme. The voice he hears belongs neither to himself nor his companion, and with a glance either side, he knows they’re alone.

His first thought is that he’s lost his mind, _finally_. And what a laugh that is, to have made it so far, and then not be able to enjoy his peace - but then, he doesn’t feel any different. Should he? Maybe he’s been broken all this time and just never noticed. He knows he’s not been the same since- since Milinda.

But then, does it even matter? The points of the rock are sore where they jab through the leather of his gloves as he clutches it hard. Maybe this is why his fellow hunter looks wearier by the day, with some torment whispering in their ear that they can’t put down. Mayhap it’s less that the warrior does not want to leave it behind, and instead _cannot_.

As soon as he thinks that, a wave of amusement washes over him. It doesn’t belong to him. Amusement, or pity, or weary fondness.

“Something like that,” the voice tells him. “The first step over the threshold is always the hardest. _Any_ threshold, mind. You got your justice when you laid that monster low. Where do you go from there?”

_Monster?_

Branden hadn’t looked a monster, at the end. Just a man, his purpose fulfilled. A man with too many scars upon his very soul, fit to burst after damming rage and sorrow in equal measure. A man who at his core had known _love_ and been made undone by it.

Not all that different to him, in the end.

“... Ah,” says the voice knowingly, as though it is peering into Granson’s heart, privy to his thoughts and his rage and his sorrow and his love. “I see.”

“Who-”

The word escapes him before Granson can think better of speaking aloud to an empty field, but his fears are unfounded: the warrior doesn’t turn to look at him, enamoured as they are by the lost treasures. Either they want to commit the things to memory before deciding on what to do with them, or… Wicked white, they might as well be looking but not seeing, hearing but not listening. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve seemed a whole world away.

There’s that feeling of amusement again.

“Like I said,” the voice continues, “First step’s the hardest. But you’ve already taken it. One foot forward, then the other, ‘til you’re walking apace again, and when you stumble…”

Oh, he’s stumbled before, again and again and again. Before Wright had been torn to pieces, and after, too. When he’d picked up a sword for the first time. Looking into Milinda’s eyes, dark and unseeing and full of the promise of a tomorrow bleak and black and broken. Waking day after day after endless, tormentous _day_.

He’s holding the rock so hard it’ll leave prints on his skin even through the leather of his glove. It isn’t fair. It isn’t _fair_.

“No, it isn’t,” the voice tells him. Whoever - _whatever_ speaks to him is more a comfort than Granson has ever known. “Nor will it ever be. But the world is exactly as we choose to make it.”

Again, he thinks of Branden, and how he’d looked at the end: back straight, gaze firm, shoulders set, a bastion of the virtues he had done so much to uphold during life… and how they had been torn from him in death. _Dear old Branden_ , hadn’t it been? Portender of death, bringer of sorrow, just another Eater, and nevermind what he’d been before.

“I think you understand that better than most… _sinner_ ,” says the voice, almost as an afterthought, as though they aren’t used to calling someone that. It would feel stranger, were it not for… everything. “Trust in me.”

“... Who _are_ you?” Granson mutters. There’s still no one on the plains but he and his fellow hunter, and the one speaking sure as sin isn’t either of them, but it feels strange nonetheless to speak aloud when no one is there to listen.

Ah, but they _are_ listening.

“The embodiment of good sense,” comes the answer with a smile Granson can all but see. “Isn’t it obvious? But never you mind that - who are _you?”_

Up ahead, the warrior has made their final judgement of the Voeburtite jewels, and hides them away easily. Safely, one hopes. Still clutching their stone - _their_ stone, not his - madly, desperately, Granson thinks about this moment ending, of having this voice torn from him entirely unceremoniously, of the return to silence, of loneliness.

“I,” he tries, and his voice cracks like he’s still a lad.

He thinks of Wright, of the carnage he’d returned to on that fateful day, and wrought himself with the bastard blade he’d picked up. Of Milinda, warm and welcoming, resplendent and repellent in equal measure. Of every scar carved deep into his flesh and soul, an ancient ache he’ll never be rid of no matter how he heals.

Of his fellow hunter, that warrior, their presence a sapling granting the barest hint of shade to him, a reprieve from the harsh glare of Light and life. How they’d let his eyes open, and focus, and led him one step at a time down a road he’d not known was open to him. 

And he thinks he knows, now.

 _I… am the stories I tell myself_ , he thinks as the warrior turns to face him. They might be anyone, any _thing_ under that helm of theirs, but it doesn’t matter who or what they are. They’re beautiful in a way no one else will ever measure up to. 

_The walker of the path of justice_ , he adds. In his hand, the stone - deep and red and not at all alive but living nonetheless - winks once under the everpresent day when he opens his fingers, and then does no more than weigh just as heavy as it should. It is, after all, just a rock. _Just another sinner_.

“All that, eh?”

The warrior puts a hand to their throat when he shows it to them, clutching at something that isn't there. “You dropped this,” he says, relieved when his voice holds steady, and though he expected the loneliness to crash over him once more like the Flood itself when it leaves him, all is silent, and still, and serene.

He wonders what _they_ hear.


End file.
